


And came over the summer like liquid night

by Merricat Kiernan (rosa_himmelblau)



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [45]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:00:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27369184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/Merricat%20Kiernan
Summary: That thing with the blonde, from Vinnie's POV.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [45]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713
Kudos: 1





	And came over the summer like liquid night

"If one more man spends half the evening telling me all about how hard his life is, and his wife doesn't understand him, and then doesn't try to get me into bed, I'm going to throw my drink in his face."

Amber's friend Zoe—Vinnie couldn't remember her last name, he'd only met her once and hadn't been too crazy about her—had said that, and she'd made a drink-throwing gesture that sloshed her dirty martini but didn't spill a drop of it. Amber had laughed and rolled her eyes. "Ignore her, she's just talking for effect."

"I am not! I'm perfectly serious. If I have to hear some guy whine about how misunderstood he is, it better be leading to an orgasm for me."

Vinnie hadn't thought about that conversation in years, but now that he was sitting in a bar, talking to a friendly blonde, it came back to him, and whatever he'd been saying evaporated from his mind.

Jill, the friendly blonde, was looking at him expectantly, which was quite reasonable since he'd been talking to her until he suddenly stopped.

"Sorry. You want another drink?"

She held up her half-empty glass and smiled at him. "Sure, why not?"

Vinnie signaled to the waitress, who brought him another beer and her another Cosmopolitan.

"Well, whatever I was saying can't have been very interesting, since I even can't remember what it was—" he stopped because she was laughing.

Zoe whatever had been right. The unattractive fact of the matter was, the reason Vinnie had come into this bar was, he'd wanted to do the one thing a guy could do with a woman, if she was the right kind of woman. He wanted to sit for a few hours and talk about himself.

He winced thinking about it, but it was true. He wasn't looking for answers, he wasn't looking for sympathy, exactly—he was looking for a little flattering attention. Jesus, that was really sad, wasn't it?

Or maybe not. Maybe it was just part of the universal condition, part of the natural dynamic between men and women.

Vinnie could imagine Amber blowing a raspberry at that one. _"Men always dominate a conversation, if the woman doesn't have balls enough to shoot them down, and they always talk about themselves."_ She'd been talking about a lunch she'd had with the agent of an act she'd been interested in signing, and her tone had been bewildered and exasperated. _"What is with you guys? I'm trying to talk business, and this guy—no, he wasn't hitting on me, don't get your big, Italian proprietary male ego out, he was telling me about his problems with his girlfriend! And not in that 'she doesn't understand me, how about you, baby?' way, it was like I was his mother!"_

Vinnie hadn't known what to tell her—he'd never thought about it before. For that matter, he didn't think about it again, until he was talking to Jill, about feeling like a failure.

He didn't know why she was listening to him. He'd never thought about that before, either, but she was, so he'd started talking, and it had been nice, right up until he'd started wondering why she was listening to him.

"You keep drifting off like that, I'm going to have to tie a string to your ankle." Her second Cosmopolitan was gone. Vinnie wondered how long he'd been ignoring her, caught up in his own thoughts.

Vinnie signaled for another drink, then smiled at Jill. "Why don't you tell me something about yourself?"

"Oh, no, you haven't finished telling me why you're in here drinking alone."

Vinnie wondered what Amber would make of **that,** decided maybe he should quit thinking about Amber, and began telling Jill—something, some made-up life that managed to incorporate his dreams for doing something important with his life and how those dreams had been shattered. Well, maybe not shattered, but never fully realized. He didn't mention anything about being a cop.

Jill, who he'd thought was maybe not too smart, nailed him immediately. "You told me before you know about cars. Have you ever thought about maybe doing something like that?"

Vinnie started to say something about wanting to do something really important, but Jill cut him off.

"Something really important.” She rolled her eyes. “You guys are all alike, you all think you have to be Superman, be the biggest and the best. And in the meantime I've had four mechanics rip me off, my car stalls out in damp weather, and I live in San Francisco, damp weather capital of the USA. You want to be a hero? Fix what's wrong with my car, fix it right, and don't overcharge me. I'm a whole lot more afraid of mechanics than I am muggers, I'll tell you."

Vinnie finished his beer. "Yeah? Well, let's see this car of yours."

She'd demurred, but Vinnie had insisted. All her car needed was a carburetor adjustment and a new air filter. Vinnie didn't have an air filter on him, but he got her carburetor adjusted, and told her where to get an air filter, and how much it should cost to have it put in.

The way she smiled at him made him feel like more of a hero than he could ever remember feeling, and his mood was high when she insisted on buying him another beer. He accepted and went to the men's room to wash the grease off his hands. 

Vinnie was pretty sure Jill thought he was trying to make her, but he didn't care. The evening would end with them going their separate ways, no hard feelings. After all, he'd fixed her car and bought her drinks, even if he had spent the evening talking about himself and his imaginary past. A carburetor adjustment wasn't an orgasm, but even Zoe Whosis would consider that a fair trade, right?

And then Sonny showed up. For a moment Vinnie was confused. He'd begun to feel like his old, pre-crack-up self, and Sonny seemed out of context, but when Vinnie caught the forced casual smile everything clicked. He could almost see Sonny conking him in the head with a rolling pin and dragging him home, and a part of him itched to make the situation worse, just to fan that jealous flame and watch Sonny torture himself for no good reason.

But he didn't have to do that because Jill did it for him. She changed when Sonny showed up, no surprise. His predatory air always had women either running from him or slinking towards him.

Sonny was brittle, a tight, edgy smile on his face like he was just about to smack Jill, though he wouldn't do that. Vinnie doubted that Sonny had ever hit a woman in his life. He didn't say much, he just insinuated himself as though they had somehow forgotten to bring him along but he wasn't impolite enough to mention it.

Jill seemed to sense there was some kind of game being played, but she didn't realize that she didn't understand just what it was. Was she vying with Sonny for Vinnie, or going after them both? Neither was going to work and Vinnie was just hoping the evening didn't end ugly.

The Vinnie who Sonny had taken to New York under false pretenses would have placated Sonny, would have tried to avoid any unpleasantness. This Vinnie thought about it, but it pissed him off that he even had to think about it, that Sonny's ridiculous need to be the center of his universe was turning a meaningless evening out into something so complicated. When Sonny went to the men's room, Vinnie followed him and said something to that effect, stopping when he realized he wasn't making any sense. He was sounding like the Vinnie he'd left in Port Authority, the needy one he'd tried to leave behind. So instead of trying to clarify, he just walked out. Fuck it, this wasn't his problem. Let Sonny get pissed, let Jill get—whatever Jill was going to get. It wasn't like Sonny was going to sock her or anything. What was the worst that could happen? He might yell, or break something, or sock Vinnie—or maybe call him Vinnie in front of Jill, which Vinnie would deal with. It would be unpleasant, and so what? Vinnie could handle unpleasant. He was a grown-up, after all.

The thing was, Sonny had been acting weird off and on ever since Milan. Milan had been the start of something big.

They'd come back to their hotel one night a little the worse—or better—for the three bottles of wine they'd had with dinner, and things had gone where things always went now that Vinnie was refusing to settle for pretending nothing was going on—Sonny had Vinnie's clothes off before Vinnie could get the chain on the door, had his own off, had Vinnie on the bed—

None of that was anything different. What was new was where things went that night, which was further than they'd ever gone before. Neither of them had planned it—they were like two teenagers fumbling around in the backseat of a car, getting carried away, and going all the way.

To Vinnie it had seemed inevitable. He had no idea what it seemed to Sonny, who could easily claim it had never before that moment occurred to him that fucking Vinnie was something he might like to do—claim it and believe it, and God, maybe it was even true. With Sonny, you just never knew.

But Vinnie did know that once they weren't pretending anymore, things were going to get more serious, so to speak. And it hadn't been something Vinnie had been looking forward to, so if they were going to do it, that was probably the best way, with no preamble. It hurt a little, but not as much as when Sonny hit him. He'd never complained about that, so he would have felt a little stupid complaining about this. And then it felt a lot better than Vinnie had expected, so that was fine. He felt OK afterwards, not like anything bad had happened to him.

There was only one problem, and that was a physiological response that Sonny had insisted on taking personally: while Sonny was fucking him, Vinnie lost his erection.

At the time Vinnie hadn't understood it either and it had surprised him—and it had confused him as much as it had Sonny, so Vinnie had done a little research. He'd found that it was a pretty common response, that the diffusion of sensation had refocused his body's attention to the more intense feeling, the stimulation of his prostate. Basically, there were two parties going on in his body, and his blood couldn't be at both, so it went to where it would have the better time. At least that was how Vinnie understood it.

But explain that to Sonny? At the time all Vinnie could say was he didn't know why he wasn't hard, he didn't want Sonny to stop, and if Sonny **did** stop, Vinnie was going to belt him. That got them through Vinnie's defloration.

Afterward, when the parties were over and the blood had moved northward again, he'd tried to tell Sonny that he'd enjoyed it, but Sonny seemed to think he was being humored, which he didn't take well, and still later, when Vinnie explained about the whole blood-dispersal thing, Sonny had said nothing until Vinnie started to leave the room. What Vinnie heard was, "—guess you're not as gay as you thought you were," and since Vinnie couldn't respond without laughing, he hadn't said anything at all. (He wished Sonny would stop using the word gay, since every time he did, Vinnie could hear the air-quotes in his head, like in that Victor Borge routine.) 

It hadn't really changed anything between them, except that Sonny had started giving him blow-jobs.

Which should have been a good thing, except that Sonny wasn't very good at it. The problem wasn't that he couldn't control his gag reflex, or that he wasn't careful about his teeth. Technically, he was fine. And while fellatio was a skill that required you to be satisfied with the fact that you were making the other person happy because you weren't going to get off yourself that way, that wasn't a problem for Sonny—he'd always liked making Vinnie happy. Vinnie suspected the problem was that he had too much time to think about what he was doing, which led to all those prohibitions resurfacing in his mind, which led to Sonny trying to distract himself, usually by talking.

Anyone with half a brain would figure out pretty quickly that talking and blow-jobs don't mix—Vinnie was pretty sure Sonny understood that intellectually. 

He'd start out fine, Vinnie's dick in his mouth, and he was definitely enthusiastic—far more so than Vinnie would have expected. Then he'd suddenly stop to tell Vinnie that he'd been thinking about buying a boat, that he wanted to change laundry services, what did Vinnie think?, and oh, had he seen Sonny's extra set of car keys? Vinnie recognized this as all those inane things that went through your head when you were giving a blow-job, but you were supposed to keep them to yourself.

It drove Vinnie crazy, and not in a good way. It was frustrating and embarrassing to have to keep reminding a guy that you had a hard-on that needed some attention, and that giving it that attention had been his idea in the first damn place. And the most frustrating thing was that there were plenty of other things Sonny was very good at, but for whatever reason he'd decided that this was how he was going to express his—

His what Vinnie didn't even know. His appreciation, maybe, that Vinnie rolled over for him. His love, probably. At least he didn't say it. Half-assed, unsatisfactory blow-jobs were better than those words.

They had tried sixty-nining—once—but Sonny had completely lost track of what he was supposed to be doing, come in Vinnie's mouth, and fallen asleep. It was so perfect an example of what women were always complaining about, Vinnie was laughing while he finished himself off. Not that that had kept him from (literally) kicking Sonny out of bed when he was done, and he'd turned over and ignored Sonny's indignant response, even as it became an apology.

Vinnie had to quit thinking so much and get his mind back in the game. Sonny had asked him something, something he hadn't caught because he'd been pretty much ignoring them both, and now both Sonny and Jill were looking at him expectantly. "What?"

Jill gave Sonny a flirty look. "He's been doing that all evening," she mock-whispered to Sonny. "I thought it was just me."

Sonny didn't answer her, he just repeated his question to Vinnie: "You want me to stay someplace else tonight?"

 _Oh, for the love of—_ "No," Vinnie said, tired of them both. And then, before either of them could say anything else, "I'm going for a hamburger over at Moose's." He didn't invite either Sonny or Jill to come along, but they were both with him when he left the bar.

Vinnie's plan had been to have a couple of drinks, then pick up a couple of hamburgers for dinner, take them home, and eat on the sofa while he watched the basketball game. Now he was stuck playing an entirely different kind of game because Sonny invited Jill to come along. Vinnie thought about saying he hadn't even asked Sonny to come with him, and if he wanted to have dinner with Jill, he should go have it, but he didn't.

The booths at Moose's were small, but instead of sitting at a larger table, Jill insisted on sitting on Vinnie's lap. Vinnie decided not to argue about it, since he already saw a lot of arguments in his future and he wanted to conserve his energy.

Jill had apparently decided she had Vinnie squared away, so she turned her attention to Sonny, flirting with him and eating his french fries. Sonny answered her in a tone Vinnie recognized as one you didn't want to hear Sonny use, and he kept that tight, edgy, angry smile in place through the whole meal.

Maybe Jill didn't recognize that, or maybe she liked playing with fire. _You mean like you do? Yeah, sure, like I do, only I really know what I'm playing with. You should pardon the expression._

"I don't think your friend likes me," Jill stage-whispered, and Vinnie had to laugh, looking at Sonny.

"Yeah, sure he does, he's just shy. Believe me, he'll get warmed up real quick once we're back at our place." Vinnie didn't know why he was egging her on when all he really wanted was to get rid of her—

_Yeah, you do. You're pissed at Sonny, so you're punishing him. And you're tired of backing down and letting him have his own way all the time._

_And you're going to be sorry. Yeah, no question about it._

Sonny never looked at him.

"Our place?" Jill asked. "You two live together?"

Vinnie could practically read Sonny's thoughts about that so he gave him a break. "Nah, I'm just staying with him 'til I get a place of my own."

"Uh-huh," she giggled, skeptically.

"You ready?" Sonny asked, still not looking at him.

"Yeah, sure."

Sonny pushed the check in his direction which meant he was ticked off—not that Vinnie didn't know that already, but if Sonny wanted him to pay, it was as good as saying the words.

Was there something wrong, that Vinnie could read Sonny so easily, that he knew Sonny's moods so well that knowing how he felt about any given thing was as easy as looking out the window to see what the weather was like? Or was it just a natural occurrence, something that would have happened with anyone he'd spent so much time with in what practically amounted to isolation? But if that was it, how come Sonny didn't know him equally well?

Not that Sonny didn't know him—the way he'd played him to get him to New York was proof of that, if Vinnie by chance needed proof. The way he'd led him to Italy, too, and there were millions of other, smaller things, too. But when he'd seen him talking to some strange woman, what did he do? This. This glowering, you-can't-have-her act, as though he thought Vinnie really wanted her. How well could Sonny know him if he really thought Vinnie wanted her?

_Yeah, but you've thrown him enough curve balls, he's still not sure he's got your number on everything. And now he's thinking you're maybe not as 'gay' as you were making yourself out to be, which after he's pretty well committed himself—yeah, you don't get to trick him into being gay, then just leave him there in the lurch. If he's going to be gay, you damned well better be there being gay with him!_

Both Jill and Sonny were looking at him funny, which wasn't surprising, since he'd been laughing to himself.

"Going to let us in on the joke?" Jill asked. Sonny wasn't looking at him anymore, he was looking at Jill again.

Vinnie shook his head, not bothering to say anything. It wasn't that he didn't want to encourage her; he was just fucking bored by her.

In the apartment, Vinnie offered beer. Sonny didn't answer him, but Jill accepted, only when he came out to the living room with two bottles, she was on the sofa with Sonny kissing her.

Vinnie stood watching Sonny getting friendly with Jill on the sofa, thinking about throwing her out—or maybe throwing her **and** Sonny out. Maybe he couldn't really do it, but it might be fun to try. And then there was Roger's voice in his head again.

It might be that this was the most disturbing thing in his life—Roger's voice had become the voice of reason. If that **wasn't** the most disturbing thing, maybe it should have been. Vinnie could think of a number of people who would be worse as the voice of reason—Charles Manson, for example. And, a little closer to home (if not actually closer to planet earth), Mel. Yes, Mel Profitt as the voice in your head would be pretty awful. But Roger Lococco really, really wasn't suited to be the voice of reason either.

Of course, considering the life he was living, Vinnie probably couldn't afford to be too choosy in the matter. For so many years Frank had been the voice of reason in his head, but considering half of what went on in his life, Frank's reaction would simply be, "What are you doing? Get out of there, find a normal life to live!" which really wasn't much help. Now, for instance, when Sonny was sexing up this girl that Vinnie had been having a drink with—it would have been cruel to force Frank to watch this, even an imaginary Frank who only existed to sit on Vince's shoulder and warn him away from temptation. How could he subject poor, imaginary Frank to that craziness?

Roger, on the other hand, had a corkscrew for a mind, so subjecting him to warped and twisted was neither cruel nor pointless. And Roger seemed to have a few things to say. Well, Roger always had a few things to say. But tonight's things were actually intriguing, and maybe useful. _"What you need to do, Buckwheat, is slam him up against the wall and remind him why he wanted you in his bed in the first place."_

_"Roger, I'm not even sure that **is** why he wanted me in his bed—I'm not even sure what's going on."_

_"You can't lie to me, Vince. You know that's why he wants you there, even if he can't say it. Why else would he want you in his bed? You're a lot more expensive than an electric blanket, and you require a lot more care. Or maybe you think he was just lonely and wanted a pet. Get real, Buckwheat. He wants you in his bed because he wants you to fuck him senseless."_

_"What makes you think so?"_

_Roger laughed at him, which wasn't much of an answer._

_"C'm'on, what about watching Sonny move in on some non-stewardess makes you think that what he **really wants** is for me to fuck him?"_

_"You want proof? Send little Miss Pick-Me-Up home and slam him up against the wall and fuck him. Twice."_

_"Twice? Why twice?"_

_"For the same reason that after we bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki: to let him know it's not a fluke. To let him know that it's going to keep happening over and over again, that this is how things are."_

_"And why do I want to do that?"_

_"Are you really that much of an idiot?"_

_"Maybe. I'm taking to myself. Or I'm talking to you, and since you aren't here, I think that's more a lateral move than a step up the sanity ladder. And what if you're wrong about this?"_

_"Hey, Vince, I'm not even here."_

Yeah, that was Roger.

Sonny smiled at him, a not-at-all-nice smile, as he walked with Jill to the bedroom. _You wanna watch?_ his smile said. Vinnie opened his beer and leaned against the wall.

_"Think about it, idiot. Steelgrave has had all these prohibitions about his bed—you weren't even allowed to sit on it unless there were a couple of girls around to prove how true red-white-and-blue straight you both are. He had prohibitions about how you can touch—where and when and for how long—you think that's because he's real casual about it, because he never thinks about it? No, dummy, it's because he thinks about it **all the time!** Well, maybe if you were giving it to him, he'd quit thinking about it all the time. At least if he didn't, it wouldn't be in terms of no, don't, stop, I can't, it'd be in terms of when, and for how long?, and do it again. You gotta admit, Buckwheat, that would be an improvement. Things could normalize, as much as they're ever going to normalize with you. And I bet it would put an end to the lousy blow-jobs."_

_"What do you mean, 'as much as they're ever gonna normalize with me'? I'm not the crazy one in this relationship!"_

_Roger sighed dramatically. "I'm not even here, and I don't have time for this. Vince, listen to yourself. You think he's crazy, and you're in a relationship with him. You think that wins you sanity points? The only question is, do you wanna fuck him, or don't you?"_

Vinnie sighed. That wasn't Roger's question, it was his. Roger thought the same thing Frank thought (now that Vince had given it to him to think), and it was the same thing anybody else who thought their relationship was not of the platonic, fraternal variety: that Sonny was after his ass.

If he'd asked the psych guys at Quantico, that's probably what they would've said, too. On first glance, it seemed obvious. But if you kept looking, if you saw what Vince saw—what only Vince saw, because Sonny never let anybody else see that deep into him—the picture began to change. Sonny loved it when Vinnie made the first move, no matter what the context; he loved Vinnie to be the aggressor. Oh, yeah, he'd called Vinnie a fag, but—

But what he'd been upset about wasn't Vinnie's sexual preference, but that he'd been hiding something from Sonny.

Vinnie had almost finished his beer. Sonny was fucking Jill. Vinnie wondered what the game plan was supposed to be. Was he supposed to fuck Jill when Sonny was finished? And whose game plan was it anyway? Jill's? Sonny's? It wasn't his, that was for sure.

His first thought was to wait until Sonny was finished, then send her home, but he was getting a little bored. He thought about going in and turning on the game, but apparently some part of him was just as possessive as Sonny, because he really didn't want to leave her alone with Sonny. He was kind of pissed at her anyway. Nice move there, glomming onto his friend the second he showed up. What would Amber say about that? What would Zoe say? Besides, he didn't want Sonny too tired for what he had in mind.

Sonny was fondling her breasts. Vinnie went for another beer. When he got back, Sonny was still fondling her breasts. She was, he had to admit, very pretty. She just wasn't, she just wasn't—

She just wasn't a challenge. That was the thing. Sonny was a challenge—hell, Sonny was a challenge even when he was easy. When he wasn't easy, he was the thorns around Sleeping Beauty's castle and the Gordian Knot and those fucking stupid double crostics Frank was always doing, he was all of those things put together. Sonny got him itchy just because trying to figure out where he was going and what he was doing and why he was doing it was so complicated. Well, not complicated exactly. Dangerous.

Like a minefield. What could be easier than walking across an open field? Just don't step on any of the mines that you can't see, hear, smell, that might not be there or might be there with each step.

 _"Hiroshima and Nagasaki?"_ he asked Roger. _"Those were just hydrogen bombs. What you're talking about is full-on thermonuclear holocaust."_

 _"Uh-huh, that's just what I'm talking about, Vince. And that's exactly what you want."_ Vinnie could hear the grin in Roger's voice.

_"And what a romantic metaphor."_

_"Romantic? Buckwheat, if you were looking for romance, you've been sharing beds with the wrong person. You want romance, you set your sites on the wrong person in that bed—though I gotta tell you, I don't think Jill's got it to give, either."_

_"You know what I mean."_

_"Tell me about it after the sex," Roger said, and then he shut up for a while._

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Vinnie said to himself. Maybe it was what he wanted, and maybe it wasn't, but it was exactly what he wanted Sonny to **give** him. And he smiled, and Jill, who was looking at him, caught his eye and smiled back, thinking he was smiling at her. Or at least because of her.

He broke eye contact. "Full-on thermonuclear holocaust," he said into his beer. He looked back over at them. Girls were like cake mixes. They were all pretty much the same, they all made pretty much the same cake, if you added the right ingredients, and the ones with the prettier pictures on the package cost twice as much, but it was still the same cake, whether you bought the generic mix or the name brand. Vinnie didn't have a metaphor for what guys were like because he'd only dabbled on that side of the fence. Probably they were pretty much the same, too. He knew what Roger was like, and he knew Sonny. And trying to use the two of them to come up with a metaphor was about as useful as pulling two random words out of the dictionary and trying to use them to learn English. Anyway, he didn't need to learn Roger. He hadn't needed to when he was **doing** Roger, and he certainly didn't need to know now. But if girls were cake mixes, Sonny was an artichoke.

Late night one night Vinnie had heard some comedian talking about artichokes, and his bit went something like, "What in the world prompted the first guy to decide to try eat an artichoke? What was it that made him look at one and think, 'There's something in there worth fighting for!'" And that was Sonny. He wanted Sonny, and he was going to fight for him—fight with him—and he could not explain why, when he looked at Sonny, this seemed to make all the sense in the world.

Vinnie went over and sat down on the bed where Sonny was fucking Jill. He put his beer on the floor and began running his hands up and down the backs of Sonny's thighs—something Sonny had done to him on more than one occasion, under similar circumstances.

Sonny didn't seem to object, but he did swear then Vinnie poured a little of his beer onto Sonny's back. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Vinnie kept himself from laughing. "Sorry, spilled it."

"Think you could find something else to do for a half hour or so?" Sonny asked, which Vinnie thought was optimistic. At the rate he was going, Sonny wasn't going to last another half hour. Was he planning on cuddling with her afterward?

"What, like go to a movie? You forgot to give me a quarter." Vinnie leaned over and started licking up the beer, which had Sonny swearing again, and not in an _I'm going to come any minute way, but in a I'd really like to kill you way._ Unfortunately for him, his hard-on was preventing him from doing anything more than what he was doing already. It was very difficult to kill someone when most of the blood that was supposed to be operating your brain had vacated it for parts south, and the woman with her legs wrapped around him wasn't exactly helping.

Vinnie began kissing Sonny's back, which Sonny didn't seem to mind, making his way down to Sonny's ass. He'd never done this before, not even with Roger, but what the hell, right? He was in this for the long haul. And now he had a plan, an agenda: a full-on thermonuclear explosion. When he put his hands on Sonny's buttocks and ran his tongue down along his crack, a shockwave seemed to go through Sonny, and Vinnie half-expected him to come right then. But he'd been distracting Sonny so much, he was further from his objective than he should have been.

Jill didn't seem distracted at all. Jill seemed very close to coming. That was good, he could get rid of Jill. Vinnie wanted Sonny's hard-on for himself. He repositioned himself so his lips were next to Sonny's right ear. "Get her off," he whispered. "But don't come. I got plans for you myself."

It seemed as though Sonny stopped breathing for a few seconds. But Jill came, and when she was finished, she started moving her hips differently, more deliberately, trying to help Sonny get off. Vinnie put a stop to that. "That's OK," he said, putting his hand on Jill's hipbone. "I'll take it from here." He watched as Sonny, almost trance-like, pulled out of her, and immediately rolled away from her, next to the wall.

She was protesting, saying that Sonny hadn't come, and what about Vinnie—? But Vinnie pulled her to her feet and started handing her her clothes. "Don't worry about it, you just get dressed and go."

Jill glanced back over at Sonny, who was swearing low under his breath, sort of a profane mantra, but before she could say anything, Vinnie took her by the arm and led her out of the bedroom. "Don't worry about it," he repeated, "he likes it this way. I'll take it from here. But thanks for playing."

When he'd seen Jill out— after thanking her for a lovely evening, and with a healthy chunk of change for cab fare—Vinnie went back to the bedroom. Sonny wasn't swearing anymore. Sonny was not talking. Sonny had gone into a sort of sexual catatonia—everything was trapped inside, nothing was coming out, and, Vinnie suspected, he thought he was going to die.

He wasn't. Vinnie wasn't going to let him, unless you counted _petit morte._ Sonny wasn't so much curled up as wound up, like a spring that only needed one more twist to be sprung. Vinnie started taking his clothes off, narrating as he went along. "Got my shirt unbuttoned."

Sonny said something. It sounded like _fuck you,_ if the person speaking had his mouth filled with cotton.

"Don't worry about Jill. I'm sure you'd approve—I gave her a handful of cash when I showed her out, and I didn't knock her down when I pushed her out the door."

This _fuck you_ had more consonants in it. "Not tonight, baby, not tonight.” And then, going on with his narration, "Got my shirt off, and my jeans undone. Oh, wait! I forgot to take off my boots."

That _fuck you_ not only had consonants, it had a couple of embellishments, too. It seemed to be Sonny's new mantra. Vinnie had to admit, he kind of liked it.

He sat down on the bed to pull off his boots, and his socks, then he stood up to get his jeans and underwear off. "I wasn't going to fuck her, you know," he told Sonny. "I was gonna have a few drinks with her, then I was gonna come home. To you. I was gonna come home to you. You just assumed I was going to fuck her. Of course, you're out of your mind, but then, we knew that, didn't we? Well, just for the record, once you decided to move in on her, I came up with a plan of my own. She wasn't the objective; she was the bait. It was you I was after." That wasn't true, of course, but Vinnie didn't consider it a lie, either but more a matter of poetic license.

"Going to kill you." Sonny seemed to be saying this to the wall. "If you don't quit talking, I'm going to kill you."

"Yeah, maybe, but not anytime soon," Vinnie said. "Where's the stuff?"

"What stuff?" Sonny sounded so confused, Vinnie almost felt sorry for him, but that didn't keep him from laughing.

He found the lube in the drawer in the table next to Sonny's side of the bed. They'd never used it; the first time in Milan had spooked Sonny and they hadn't done that again, but Vinnie had bought the lube and put it in easy reach, just in case.

As a demonstration of his intentions, the first thing Vinnie did was pry Sonny's cheeks apart and stick his tongue as far as he could up Sonny's ass. It was a statement more than an action: _Hey, pal, is this gay enough for you?_

Vinnie pulled the pillow out from under Sonny's head, then gave him a smack on the ass. "Lift up, you're in the wrong position." Sonny muttered something, but he lifted up, and Vinnie shoved the pillow underneath him. Then he opened the lube, breaking the seal, thinking that it was only the first seal he'd be breaking that night, listening to Sonny's breathing, which seemed to be getting closer to normal. Sonny started to sit up, but Vinnie pushed him back down. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" Vinnie asked. "We're nowhere near done here." He squirted some of the stuff onto his hand, got his fingers nice and juicy, then shoved one finger up Sonny's ass.

Sonny gasped, tightened, made a sound like Vinnie had never heard before, one he couldn't identify as either refusal or consent, but it didn't matter. It was way too late for either. Vinnie knew just what he was looking for, and when he found it, stroked it, the whole idea of letting or not letting disappeared and some primitive hunger overtook Sonny. Vinnie stuck another finger in, stroked until Sonny's gasping started sounding a little like Jill's teapot impression, then took both fingers out, smeared lube all over his dick, and slid it home.

"What're you doing?" Sonny asked, sounding kind of panicky. If it hadn't been for the panic, Vinnie would have laughed at the question—at the timing of it, anyway.

Vinnie bit the back of his neck, lightly. "What's it feel like I'm doing, huh? I'm doing **you.** "

"This isn't—not—it shouldn't feel good—!" Sonny's voice cracked. Vinnie kissed the side of his face.

"Then maybe I'm doing it wrong," he suggested, and Sonny called him something in Italian, and it wasn't _mio caro._ "I'll try to get it right the next time, make sure it doesn't feel good." He was sliding out slowly, sliding back in just as slowly, wanting to get Sonny settled before he really let loose.

Sonny had shown remarkable, incredible discipline. He hadn't done the natural thing when Jill left and wrapped his hand around his dick, but now when he tried to, Vinnie wouldn't let him. "Huh-uh, not yet, not 'til I'm ready," and Sonny said something, but Vinnie was almost sure those weren't real words he was using. Still, they got his message across.

Now that Sonny was squared away, Vinnie was letting himself go, and yeah, it was something. Maybe not full-on thermonuclear meltdown, but it was **Sonny** —even if it had been bad, it would still be Sonny, and God, did he love Sonny, and Sonny was going out of his mind, and Vinnie wrapped his hand around Sonny's dick to help him along, and stopped thinking.

Sonny was yelling his name. Vinnie had never heard him do that before, not like this, not like he was drowning and at the same time couldn't get enough and Vinnie was the one drowning him and also saving his life, and it was more than enough, it was too much, it was more than too much—

For a while he just lay there, letting his breathing and heart rate get back to normal. He felt about as good as he could ever remember feeling, at least since he'd become an adult, and maybe ever. For the first time Vinnie got it, that irrational, unreserved adoration that he sometimes saw in Sonny's eyes, and God did it feel good. Not just loving Sonny, but letting himself love Sonny. It was like he'd finally stopped holding his breath.

Vinnie had seen Sonny after sex more times than he could count, with and without third (and fourth) parties. He'd never seen Sonny so wrung out, and besides giving him the strongest feeling of _job well-done,_ he also felt ridiculously protective. Sonny was sprawled on his side of the bed, but Vinnie wasn't in the mood to try to move him, so he just took the pillow out from under him and threw it on the floor, decided a trip to the bathroom would be a good idea. He was wiping his face with a wet washcloth when there was Roger's voice again, crowing over his rightness.

_"What makes you think you were right?"_

_"If I'd been wrong, he'd've laughed at you when you told him not to come when he had the bar chick. Instead, he did exactly what you told him to."_

Yeah. He had. Had this fixed things, gotten the planets into their proper alignment, everything on its correct orbital track? Their relationship had been off-kilter ever since Sonny's "death"—well, OK, before that, only Sonny hadn't known it. The guy stuff was easy—going to the gym, hanging out, driving fast and laughing at nothing. Looking at girls. That stuff was easy, had always been easy—it had been easy even when Vinnie was pretending, because it was part of what he didn't have to pretend. Going out with Sonny for a late lunch, sneaking away from the hotel—sneaking! Why had they been sneaking, Sonny owned the hotel, who were they sneaking from? But they snuck out, and spent a couple of hours down on the boardwalk, looking at girls. Those imaginary conversations with the girls, the "Miss Right" game they'd used to play. _"Yellow tank top, what do you think?" Vinnie asked._

_"Are you kidding?"_

_"No, what's wrong with her?"_

_"In two years you'd be married, with a kid and another on the way."_

_Vinnie had laughed._

_"She'd wanna know why the hotel wasn't bigger, and I don't like the laundry service here, and why are there grapes in the chicken salad? You know I don't like grapes—"_

_"Why **are** there grapes in the chicken salad?" Vinnie asked. "I don't like grapes either—"_

_Vinnie remembered that so well because Sonny had practically fallen out of his chair laughing._

_"Yeah, OK, what about her?"_

_"Pink shorts?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"That's better. Cool car. You ever made out in this car?"_

Laughing like idiots. Yeah, laughing was always easy with Sonny. Uncomplicated things.

Sex complicated everything, and the only reason they'd been having sex was because Sonny couldn't seem to not to, and that was because Sonny wanted everything. Sonny wanted him right down to the lint in his pockets and the—lint in his bellybutton. If Sonny was an artichoke, he was a bowl of ice cream, with Sonny sucking on the spoon and licking the bowl.

_"Maybe you're just hungry," Roger suggested. "You always did pig out after sex."_

_"I ain't greedy, baby, all I want is all you got."_ That **was** Sonny. And if you didn't want him back like that? Then you didn't want him at all. Sonny had no middle ground, he didn't even know what it meant. You either loved him heart, soul, mind, body, or you were against him. It occurred to Vinnie that it must be exhausting, being Sonny Steelgrave, even without the name and the reputation.

Well, Vinnie had changed—if not all that, a lot of it. He'd changed the rules, by taking charge, by showing Sonny he wanted him just as much as Sonny wanted him, and by the way, they **weren't** having sex just because Sonny wanted to. Vinnie wanted to, too.

Sonny said something, Vinnie didn't catch all of it, just the last word, "—bed?" which was enough to tell him what the question had been.

"Yeah, be right there," Vinnie said. He stood looking at himself in the mirror for a minute. He looked older than the last time he'd really done this, but not a lot. He looked clear-eyed, anyway, and while he needed to lose some weight, he didn't look too bad. There were no shadows lurking behind his eyes, no guilt, no secrets.

Vinnie picked up the tangled bedding, covered Sonny, then he turned out the lights and got into bed with him, wrapping himself around Sonny in a way he hadn't for a long time. This time there was no tensity, no moment of fight-or-flight; Sonny pushed back into him as though he was a cave he was huddled in against the winter cold.

There were worse things in the world he could be.


End file.
